The Guy From That Thing - The Movie
by Rogha
Summary: Roleswap AU. You set out to make a film, not to prove Murphy's Law. But when you get the old gang back together for one last hurrah on a soundstage, it seems like you're going to end up doing the latter.
1. Pre-Production

**This is was written as an entry to inkitt's Con Man contest, submitted under the handle Rogha - which I'm debating about taking on over here, for the sake on interest consistency. If you want to slide on over and vote for me there, you can, but if you just want to have a gawk at some other fic you can do that too.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own these guys. I think Joss Whedon does.**

* * *

 **Pre-Production**

* * *

The worst thing about being cast in a cult series that was cancelled too soon is finding a new job.

One minute you think you've got at least five years of work (maybe seven if you're lucky, because you don't think they're going to kill you off, and even then that's no guarantee of actually leaving the show) then the next you're out on your ass, halfway through the season, long before you ever even considered stealing a prop to have as a memento.

You'd have taken one of the guns, they weren't real and your character never even got to shoot one - you would've in the next episode, it was in the script they gave you, right before you landed out on your ass - but they looked real fucking cool.

Your character was a terrible shot, apparently.

And you're pretty famous because of thirteen episodes (two that were only released on DVD, which sucks) but finding work elsewhere is pretty tricky, because the first thing everyone says to you is 'hey, you're that guy from that thing' and what can you say but 'yeah, I'm the guy from that thing' and then they want a photo and your name and they snap their fingers a lot while they try and suss it out.

You always want to tell them, but they're too busy insisting that they know it, they really do, it's on the tip of their tongue to even hear you when you say 'Yeah, I'm Hoban Washburne, I played Alan Tudyk in Flying Fires.'

So mostly you do voice work, which is great because you can go to work in your pyjamas sometimes, and no one really cares if you get a haircut after you've been cast to play an evil personification of Candy Crush.

You can't pretend you don't miss being on set, seeing something take shape in front of your eyes, instead of hoping that you remember what the guy you are supposed to be talking to looks like. Today, it's a human demolition derby, tomorrow, who knows?

You have a message waiting for you when you get off the clock, you aren't allowed to have your phone on in the recording booth. It fucks with the sound equipment, even when it's on airplane mode.

It's a call from Mal Reynolds, wearer of tight pants and your best man, a voicemail telling you that he's getting the band back together and making a movie out of the cult classic that's fucked with your career for the past four years. You're still pretty good friends, mostly because you guys are high in demand in the con scene and spend every summer on tour.

And it's not like you're starving or desperate for money, but who wants to be the asshole that ruins the comeback tour? On top of that, you're starting to run out of Flying Fires anecdotes to talk about at conventions and you do really want to steal one of those guns.

So hell yeah, you're in.

You'll call him later.

And then you need to go shopping, because you can't go to work in your pyjamas anymore, and your work pyjamas are starting to seem a little unprofessional. You might have to demote them to weekend pyjamas.

And to top all this off, like the cherry on a cake, when you get home from recording and shopping that evening, you find out Mal called your wife before you. She says it's because they're best friends (he was only you're best man for show) and he thought Zoe might need to convince you to come back.

And if you'd known that you'd have said no, just to annoy him.

You can't do that now anyway, seeing as she already told Mal that you were interested in the project. You are, but you don't want to feel taken for granted.

You might still change your mind about the interest your wife said you were showing, especially when Zoe drops the bomb that you have to crowdfund the movie. You have to google it to find out if it means what you think it means, which it does. You love her and you loved being Alan, but pleading for money from the public for a last hurrah, some closure and a laser blaster that only blasts lasers in post?

You aren't even kidding yourself. You're not above begging. You might even be beneath it. That would imply you have some sort of dignity, and dignity does not sit with those who voice living cavities while wearing dinosaur print pyjama bottoms and a Hawaiian shirt.

It's probably a good look on some people, but according to most people, you aren't in their number.

The Kickstarter is filmed on a Thursday, and it's the first time the entire gang has been in the same room since filming. Jayne is wearing that god awful hat his mom sent him that time they were filming in 18 degrees fahrenheit, the one that he refused to take it off on set. River is just as strange as ever, and she still refuses to wear shoes if she can avoid it. Simon is still anxious and anal, fussing over his sister like she can't look after herself-which is a topic up for much debate- completely oblivious to Kaylee mooning after him like a lovesick cow.

It's like they've all hopped in a time machine and gone back four years. It's demoralizing, frankly. It makes you feel stagnant, until you find out how much everyone's moved on with their lives.

Simon was only supposed to work onset as River's chaperone and landed himself a part by accident. Went right back to being a doctor afterwards, a trauma surgeon in one of the busiest hospitals in the State and on the path to doing great things. Probably the only one among you glad to see the show cancelled early, if not for the fact it near broke River's heart.

Derrial Book went and found god some time in the interim, possibly in prison, but all he'll tell them is that there was a bowl of soup involved. He won't even let you in on the recipe you ought to be looking out for God in.

Looking around at two former child actors, a doctor who's reprising the only role he ever had, a priest, a man called Jayne, your wife and your wife's best friend, all you can say is - "Mal, where's Inara?"

Mal starts coughing, and your wife thumps him on the back to make sure he doesn't kill himself choking on spit. Suddenly everyone wants to know where Inara is, because she's kind of the glue everyone was expecting to make this idea work. There's no one here who doesn't know how to go an hour without sticking their foot in their mouth and still somehow insulting someone around those little piggies.

This, you think, is going to be a disaster, because it all comes out then: the original director is not on board (not on board 'yet' is not on board _enough_ ) and Mal's managed to wrangle just one of the original writers into this, supplementing the pair with the author of a very popular Flying Fires fanfiction (not the most popular one, one called 'As the Wind Blows It' that guy hasn't updated for years and been given up for dead.). They waste an hour reading fanfiction aloud to one another. Some of it's pretty good and you find yourself frustrated that 'As the Wind Blows It' hasn't updated in four years and it's not finished.

When Zoe asks if they even have permission to do this thing, Mal goes quiet.

They don't not have permission.

They also don't have a director, any money, official access to any of the original set pieces and props (locked away in a warehouse somewhere), a script, a shooting schedule, or one of the main characters.

Not to mention the fact you're all sitting around Mal's kitchen, trying to figure out how to crowdfund. River's playing with the camera, filming you arguing about the Kickstarter, filming Kaylee snooping around Mal's cupboards, filming her making everyone a fresh batch of brownies to soothe their souls. They're pretty good, but Simon nearly faints when Kaylee's says "it's my secret ingredient, weed, makes them real tasty" and it's clearly a joke but you can't help but think that some pot brownies might do something to help the massive headache-inducing underdog story this is turning out to be.

Also, Simon is a doctor, he should know how pot brownies are made. You make a mental note to avoid trauma in his vicinity, suddenly losing confidence in his abilities.

Then you remember that just because he has no idea how to have any kind of fun at all, doesn't mean he's a bad doctor. He was headhunted recently.

Zoe calls Inara, who's a teacher now, showing a new generation of aspirational thespians the ways of Shakespeare, because she was plucked from theatre to play Morena and upon the series cancellation, she returned from whence she came. Turns out Mal didn't even call her, mostly 'cause he's been carrying a torch that's in danger of burning the entire world to a crisp, but she says she'll be there in fifteen minutes, if only so she can express her hurt and disappointment in Mal in person.

Then she asks where there is and Zoe has to give her directions.

And River keeps filming and filming, while you and Kaylee talk about the fact that she works for NASA, that she's getting her Masters in aerospace engineering and if any of you make it to space in real life it's going to be her. She fixes Mal's broken toaster oven while you talk, because Zoe is calling Josh Wheton, the original director/creator, just in case it turns out Mal left him out too.

They don't get permission as such, but they do get 'fund it, then we'll see' which according to Mal basically means yes, but that he's not getting his hopes up.

Inara tears Mal a new one when she turns up, and Mal blusters his way through an argument and an apology and River gets all that on camera too. She turns away from him primly, ignoring him to enquire after everyone else's well being.

It takes all day to get around to shooting five minutes of a plea for money, and you hope that one take does it, because River used all available memory to film the day's proceedings. But you don't think it will, because that one take is all of you crowded on the sofa in Mal's living room, trying to make it look like they have a plan and that people can be confident in you and it went something like:

"We're bringing back 'Flying Fires' or we're gonna die trying."

"No we aren't. Not one's going to die, Mal."

"Some people might die. No one you like."

"If you haven't killed those executives by now you probably never will."

"It was too soon."

"It'll always be too soon."

"I go by Mal Reynolds, and I played Nathan Fillion on Flying Fires."

"I'm Hoban Washburne and I played Alan Tudyk on Flying Fires."

"I'm Zoe Washburne, and I played Gina Torres."

"I'm Father Derrial Book and I was Ron Glass in Flying Fires."

"I'm Kaywinnet Lee Frye and I played Jewel Staite. But y'all can call me Kaylee, near enough everyone does."

"I'm Doctor Simon Tam, I played Sean Maher."

"My name is River Tam, and I played Summer Glau. I wrote 'As The Wind Blows It'."

"What!?"

"You wrote that?"

"How does it end?"

"It doesn't."

Then the camera stops filming, because River used all the memory to film them eating brownies and arguing, so they don't get the rest of the disbelief on film, or anything else for that matter. Jayne starts complaining about how he "didn't get no turn" saying who he was for the kickstarter video. Inara goes about trying to soothe Jayne's hurt feelings by saying that she didn't get to say anything, but she got to look pretty, which is something Jayne has always struggled with. She wants to know what 'As the Wind Blows It' is, because she missed out on that portion of the day's activities. You can feel everyone else's headache throbbing at your temples.

You yawn loudly a couple of times, looking at your watch and trying to get people to "oh would you look at the time" so you can make your excuses, but Zoe reminds you that you have a kid now. Emma is a built in excuse to leave any event you want.

She's the best thing that ever happened to you, right after Zoe.

You're probably the third best thing that happened to Zoe, if only because you know she has Buzz Aldrin's autograph.

She got it for you, but she was the one who got to meet him.

So you yawn a couple more times and insists that it's getting late and you've probably let the nanny along with Emma long enough so you and Zoe ought to head on home, which starts everyone else on a retreat. River tries to take the camera and all the day's footage home with her and Simon, before Mal can notice.

And even when he does notice, you see that he just sighs and shrugs, telling her that she can borrow it for a while. It seems pretty clear to you that's because he's not really sure how much he could've done with less than a quarter of the footage he intended to get done today anyway.

You'll reconvene at a later juncture apparently, but no one suggests any such juncture for potential reconvention.

And you kind of think your hopes have been dashed until four days later, when Mal sends you a link to a kickstarter video. It's mostly footage of you arguing about how they're going to do this, Simon nearly fainting and Zoe on the phone with various people who might help you go about making a movie.

There's a few good shots of Mal cowering under Inara's wrath.

River has a gift for found footage, clipping together a disaster of a day, and the disaster that was critically acclaimed, cancelled too-soon series. It's fast paced and almost like a film trailer, and you kind of want to watch this movie, the one about an old gang trying to make a movie out of a pipe dream.

The video makes you look like some kind of rebel alliance, especially because you didn't notice that River had filmed you boasting about your piloting skills- you weren't always an actor- and Kaylee looks like she might be building something dangerous, sitting on the floor surrounded by the guts of a toaster oven.

But no one else has to know it was a toaster oven.

A fully functional toaster oven, Kaylee can say with pride.

There's a list of rewards you hadn't agreed to, thing like signed photos and posters and producer credits and premiere tickets, but you've been well and truly roped in now, and you've reached your target by the end of the month, and exceed it easily.

That kind of surprises you, because you thought you were going to end up making this film on a shoestring budget, or out of all of your own pockets.

Now comes the real work, because you guys still don't have anything, the director is up in the air and you have to try and see if you can get the studio to release the props and sets for use or if you have to build them from scratch.

You doubt you'll have to go from scratch - River insists she can get them, and it's not like you've been too worried about having permission for anything so far, so why not break as many laws as you can while making this movie? Go for a record.

Making a movie is harder than you thought, and you never thought it was easy, but there's a lot of work involved. Work you never had to do before, or even really think about who did. Nearly ten years you've been in the business, and you still don't really know what a producer does but you could really use one right about now.

Well. It's too late to back out now, you've already signed enough photographs to build a bridge to the moon for the people who funded you. But you still wish you knew what you were supposed to do with all that money, other than blow it all on digital effects.

Simon has to ask about getting leave from work, which no one likes, because he's damn good as a doctor, even if he is a little less than stellar as an actor. And it's not just him, Kaylee's colleagues at NASA, who are all super nerds anyway, are thrilled to learn that she's reprising her role as Jewel. This annoys her, because the novelty of working with a child-actor-turned-teen-actor-turned-honest-to-god-space-cadet had finally worn off apparently only for everyone to lose their shit when they learned she was coming out of retirement. And you don't even want to know how difficult it is to get time off from the priesthood, according to Book.

It all works out somehow, and you just have to finish up with being the Cavity King and you'll all be ready to go.

The writer and the fanfiction author turn over a script in record time, and River rewrites the whole thing in about an hour, in some sort of strange code that Simon has to spend a couple of days decrypting in order to photocopy it for the cast you have. Which isn't a whole lot of cast, if you're being honest.

According to her, it's no 'As The Wind Blows It' but it'll do.

You're over the moon when you get the script, still warm from the copy shop. Unlike the tragedy of episode 16, the episode that never was where you'd have gotten to shoot a blaster, you really do get to shoot a blaster, not just false promises.

Like once, before you get impaled by a harpoon.

Five pages in.

Great.

* * *

 **Please R &R. Feedback is my actual lifeblood. **


	2. Mid-Production

**Mid-Production**

* * *

River changes her mind about you and the blaster, so it jams and you smack the side and get harpooned before you can try shooting it again.

It takes four takes for you to be happy with your death, and another two for Simon to emote something that can work as a response.

You wrap within a week of filming, but it turns out that the original director/creator was 'committed to other projects' so the task falls to you. You have no idea what you're doing, but your wife is very encouraging and Josh does his best to take your many, many calls. He calls 'Flying Fires' his baby, but if the series was his baby, the film is his baby that he left in the woods and ended up being raised by wolves.

It's an unfortunate but apt analogy, especially since you don't remember getting permission to pull those set and props out of storage, but somehow, you have them. River is strangely silent on the topic, and the good Father just looks knowingly toward the sky and says "ask and you shall receive" whenever the topic comes up.

That's all well and good, but you didn't ask and God didn't break into a warehouse for you.

This is going to be a long three months, but it's nice being on set with the old gang, winding up the story and giving everyone some closure. Well, you hope. You still aren't sure you won't get sued for this, and River wrote the script with negligible input from anyone else, including the two people you intended to have write it.

If all else fails you think it might count as a 'transformative work'.

The legalities are all a bit up in the air, but one thing is true: you guys are making a great movie. A worthy finale to the cut-short series. You hope. It's your wolf baby now- as long as it doesn't gnaw on the furniture, you'll be happy.

It pays to have low expectations, not that any of the fans do. There's a whole lot of theorizing, and Inara's mostly running the marketing campaign between filming and teaching. Her schedule is pretty full, but you see she still has time to entertain Mal.

Mal should be the director by rights, but he's in nearly every scene, and Simon won't listen to him, and River won't listen anyone but Simon. You can feel your blood pressure climbing as the days go by. It's a team effort, you insist, everyone steps up to direct segments of it, make suggestions, argue a lot and tell River to stop filming everything.

You don't have any siblings, but you're pretty sure that this is what it feels like to have a whole crowd of them. Mom left you in charge of yourself, your weird family and your wolf baby.

The behind the scenes of this movie is going to be really strange, and there's like a million bloopers of them just dicking around already.

At least you have a blaster now.

Kaylee brings her favourite work friends to see the set, and they practically shit their pants when you say that they can be extras. They'll be on screen for less than a few seconds, if even, but it doesn't seem to bother them.

They get photographs and autographs and one of them elbows Kaylee hard every time Simon so much as glances vaguely in her direction.

Inara and Mal snipe at each other, constantly, and it's like watching a ten-year-old pulling on his crush's pigtails. There's a betting pool, and an unnamed party has ten dollars on "when hell freezes over" but the smart money is on the premiere, where everyone is planning to get blackout drunk incase the movie turns out to be awful.

A lot of things can happen when you're blackout drunk.

You aren't supposed to talk about it, but maybe Mal'll marry Inara next time he gets that drunk. Zoe stood as his best man, and even though his first wife turned out to be straight up evil and used a pseudonym on the license, she says she'd do it again. You wonder if you should be discouraging your wife from enabling Mal's tendency towards drunken nuptials.

It's a problem for another day, if another day happens to be one where the object of his drunken marriage isn't Inara, the object of his sober affections. Inara would kill you if she heard how many times you used the word object in that sentence. She's a person, you get it.

Being the director means having people ask your opinion on everything, and they mostly value it, even if you don't have a clue what you're talking about half the time. It's art, you don't have to know.

Today you're shooting a scene that comes somewhere in the middle of the film, and it's going to be relying heavily on Simon's ability to emote. It's nice that River had faith her brother could carry a scene on his own but acting is really not the poor guy's calling. He should stick to saving lives.

You're doing your best, and Simon's at least able to learn his lines, which you can't say for Jayne but god bless him they're both trying. This entire film deserves an A for effort. How much can you rely on a participation grade? Probably not at all in film industry, right?

Mal gives everyone a pep talk, which should probably be your job, but Mal makes you believe that you can make this film and win several minor genre specific accolades for it doing it too. You have this in the bag.

Everyone is rallying, Mal managed not to insult anyone, Simon looks like he might actually fake some emotions convincingly and Jayne yells that he "applied the motherfucking cortical electrodes" and you smile at your wife and everything is falling into place with this movie that you can't even call godforsaken on account of the preacher you got on board.

Then the lawyer shows up with the cease and desist notice and it all goes straight back to falling apart.

You want to do something dramatic, like set it on fire to show that you don't care about the law, but instead you wave your hand for them to continue shooting without you and put on your reading glasses so you can have a closer look at what exactly it is you need to cease and desist.

So, before you were pretty sure you didn't have permission to be making this film, but now you're really extra sure you don't so you let Mal start directing this scene and signal Zoe to come over for a private conversation.

You think you should probably just cut and run, say to hell with the film and go hang out in Tahiti for six to eight years until it all blows over. Zoe is not tempted by your generous offer, instead calling up the family lawyer to go over what exactly it you have to stop.

The family lawyer says that he specializes in family law for a reason, then refers them to another lawyer. Actually he refers them to her secretary, who seems like a lovely woman who the office would not function nearly so well without. She promises to pass the message on to the lawyer.

Zoe calls Josh then, who insists it's nothing to do with him, the studio must've found out. You aren't sure that the studio should be the ones holding the copyright, and Josh agrees. But he's not sure. He can't seem to remember whether or not he signed away the copyright to his creation.

You start to think he was really exaggerating when he called the series his baby, or if he wasn't, maybe you should call Social Services. He promises to dig out the contract from his films, but that'll take a while, because he keeps them in a storage unit. He tells you to keep going, he's really confident that he didn't sign away his copyright.

You shrug and go back to shooting, because there's nothing you can do, unless you want to cease and desist, and as much as you hear that Tahiti is nice this time of year (might be nice for six to eight years), you really don't want to stop making this movie. Even if Alan did die prematurely and unjustly without shooting a blaster even once.

You pat your hip holster, because if all else goes down the crapper, they will have to pry the blaster from your cold dead hands because you have every intention of being buried with it when you do kick the bucket. Emma can have your autographed photograph of Buzz Aldrin, but you're keeping this goddamn blaster if it kills you.

And if it kills you, you'll be buried with it, as previously discussed.

In the interim, Mal has coached Simon into emoting enough to carry the scene, and Jayne only fucked up his lines a little, not enough to ruin the take, but enough to give it a little character.

That's good. This film needs a little character if it's going to be successful. It also needs not to be shut down by the studio who produced 15 episodes of Flying Fires, but one problem at a time. And there's a lot of problems cropping up all of a sudden.

You want to go home and cry, but you think that wouldn't seem very manly.

But then again, going home that evening and eating a pint of mint chocolate chip doesn't seem very manly either, but that's what you end up doing. Zoe doesn't even try stop you, grabbing a tub of vanilla to join you on the couch in solidarity.

You put on a procedural cop drama on the television, because that's better than eating ice-cream sadly in silence, and it somehow makes you feel better to know that you at least haven't been murdered.

You really want to make this movie. You were over the moon to be making it, stressed to high heaven, but over the moon.

You can tell that it's the first project any of them have been really excited about in a long time. River hasn't acted in anything in over a year, and three of your cast members have come out of retirement just to do this. You don't think "but your honour, making this film has improved our general mood and quality of life" will work in a courtroom situation though.

You file the quip away in your memory, because on the off chance it does go to court, you are prepared to try anything to make this movie, shy of bribery, death threats and murder. River can handle those. You aren't sure exactly what a qualm is, but she doesn't have any.

As a group, qualms are pretty thin on the ground.

Josh calls halfway through filming, and you have to yell cut to answer, which jars everyone out of character in the worst way, but this is important. You wouldn't have had your phone on otherwise.

And because it's important, you shove your phone at your wife and tell her to answer it while you huddle around her with everyone else, straining to hear every word because Zoe hates talking on loudspeaker and dammit if she's going to make this easy for everyone.

It's hard to make out over everyone's baited breath, but it sounds an awful lot like Josh Wheton did, in fact, sign away the copyright.

Some of you sink to the floor, because this is what's known in the business as a Huge Setback, but River steals the phone and starts babbling too quickly to be coherent. River's smarter than than MENSA's AGM though, so even if you don't understand what the fuck she's saying, you think it might make sense to someone out there.

Zoe wrestles it back from her, and River scowls. Simon gently lures her away, distracting her with his phone. You don't think that'll work in a million years, but she snatches it from him and turns it on, typing rapidly. Simon shrugs at you, and you send a PA to make a copy of the cease and desist and drop it off with that secretary you were referred to the other day.

"I want one," River insists, not looking up.

You nod at the PA, because it's easier than arguing and you can't think of a reason she shouldn't have a copy if she wants one, and sigh heavily. Then you sigh again for good measure and get back to filming. What else are you supposed to do?

Only, River won't get off Simon's iPhone long enough to film any of her scenes, especially when the PA gives her the copy of the cease and desist, so you have to reshuffle the shooting schedule quickly to make sure today is not a total waste of time.

Not that you can guarantee that it's not a waste of everyone's time and money, because this all depends on what the lawyer says, if he ever gets around to taking your case.

* * *

Your court date is set for a Thursday, and the lawyer associated with the secretary you were referred to never got back to you. Which isn't great, but it's not the worst thing that could happen, especially once River tells you that she passed her bar exam two years ago.

"I was bored."

River has like a million qualifications, it turns out, dozens of hokey online certificates and a triple major and about a half dozen minors. When you ask Simon when she sleeps, he shrugs and tells you "occasionally, she doesn't like to." He says it like it's a battle he lost a long time ago.

Anyway, he'll have to get used to being bored, because you don't even have a set time. It's a window, and you could be here all day.

But it's kind of interesting, listening to other people make their cases. It's not even really a court day. It's a day for deciding whether or not you have a real court day, or something. You aren't sure. But you know that at the end of today you will either have to come back and sit here anxiously again or it'll be done and dusted.

Good news is that the turnout is good. Everyone is there, looking varying degrees of respectable. It's nice to feel like they have your back, even though Jayne could still stab it.

He probably won't, but you can't be sure.

Even Josh came and sat on your side, in a show of solidarity. You appreciate it right until the plaintiff produces the contract where he signed away his copyright and the judge looks at him like he's a complete idiot. Which to be honest, in this case, he was.

You still aren't sure about River being your legal representative, seeing as she's been drawing on her arm all day, and run out of room - only to move to yours. Mal is on the far side, but she might make you switch if she fills in your arm. She's drawing Concord, the spaceship from Flying Fires on your arm in impressive detail.

Mal looks a little jealous, but she's really digging that pen in there and sure, you like the look of Concord on your arm, but you like the idea of being able to wash it off even better. If she manages to get this movie out of this rut, you'll get her face tattooed on your chest.

The plaintiff's lawyer makes a long, reasonable sounding argument before sitting down. He's extremely professional, making not to look too smug or incredulous when River gets up to defend. You're worried that the judge might hold her in contempt; Simon assures you he did everything he could to get her to wear shoes, but she threw them out the car window on the way here.

It's a strange day that you think the universe is smiling down on you when you find yourself grateful that your defence lawyer didn't get arrested on the way here, but today is indeed a strange day and you are wearing your luckiest boxers.

The judge must be halfway to blind, because you aren't even sure he notices, or if he does, he doesn't comment on it. He calls River up to make her counter-argument, and boy, is it a doozy.

Well.

You think it is.

To be honest you aren't so much paying attention, as much as praying that no one asks you any questions, because there's still plenty of time for you to fuck this up.

Mal's paying rapt attention, even if he's trying to look like he isn't. Kaylee is surreptitiously live-tweeting the court proceedings, and Book is praying right there with you. Simon is paying attention too, but he looks mostly just proud. When Emma gets her first role as a tree in a school recital, that what your face is going to look like, probably.

It takes so long that even Mal's attention wavers enough for you to beat him at about two dozen sly games of hangman, and you get so caught up in kicking his ass that you don't even realise that the judge has heard all evidence and arguments until everyone stands up around you. You have to scramble to catch up, tipping your chair back so it cracks against the railing behind you..

Is he going to bang his mallet thing?

"It's called a gavel."

You don't think you said anything aloud so you just stare at River for a second, suddenly afraid that your thoughts aren't your own anymore. It's a scary thought, and it worries you that she now knows that you are afraid of her mind powers.

She smiles at you, and you feel very unsafe.

The Judge gives his ruling- "given that 'Concord' is of social benefit and serving to shed light on an earlier work, and by that process, creating a new one" and that "having someone surrender their copyright in the fine print is immoral" he throws out the case, and tells them to finish making the movie.

You're lucky that they aren't trademarked, because the judge warns you that that's another kettle of fish all together.

He's a big fan apparently.

You all cheer, loud enough that the judge is forced to halfheartedly bang his gavel a few times to get you to keep it down. You want to kiss your wife, but you're suddenly glad that she is in second row back, out of range, because it means that you not only get to see Kaylee and Simon kiss, but you bear witness to the moment when Mal goes to kiss Inara, panics and ends up planting one on Jayne instead.

It stings a little, because you were right there and he picked Jayne over you, so you can't even imagine how Inara's feeling.

You do kiss your wife later though, when she shows you that she managed to snap a picture of the beautiful moment.

Then she reminds you to call a tattoo parlour.

* * *

 **Please R &R.**


	3. Post-Production

**Post-Production**

* * *

How long is a piece of string? Too goddamn long in your opinion.

That's how long they say post-production is. Whoever they are, fuck them.

River is still editing like twenty minutes before the premiere is supposed to start, and you have to buy time. She says she'll be done in forty, and she'll be right down. You estimate that stretching out to at least an hour.

At least she's already here, finishing up inside.

So you pass word around that you need to stay on the red carpet for as long as possible. You don't elaborate on why. Your hand is starting to ache from signing autographs, but you can push through for the sake of your wolf baby movie, which may or may not be good.

You think you might be blinded by your love for the project. Josh tells you that happens sometimes, but you are mostly concerned with the decision you made to have a man who goes by Mr. Universe compose the score. He's here too, dressing in a holo-sequin suit with a supermodel towering over him as his date.

Zoe quirks an eyebrow when she catches you looking, but she looks gorgeous, so you don't know what she could be worried about. Unless she's worried that the flashes going off and bouncing off all those sequins could cause permanent vision loss, which is something you are starting to worry about too, now that it's entered your head.

You still find it nearly impossible to to look away from that trainwreck, but you need to think of a way to slow this march down the red carpet until River and Simon get here with the film. It's kind of a crucial element to the whole premiere experience.

Kaylee is having a long discussion about astrophysics or something with the crowd, who seem both highly interested and incredibly confused. For once, Simon is the one mooning all over her. She's gesticulating all over the place, and Jayne has to duck his head and tries to avoid swearing at her as he passes, managing a "motherfudger". Jayne is wearing that goddamn hat again, but he's wheeling his little sister's bedazzled wheelchair over a stubborn fold in the red carpet, so it looks kind of quaint.

Mal and Inara are pointedly ignoring each other. You hate when they do that, but she's pretty hurt that he picked Jayne over her - hell you're pretty hurt that he picked Jayne over you. You were right there, beside him, and he kissed Jayne? _Jayne!?_

"Zoe?"

"Huh?"

"You don't have a flask in your clutch, do you?"

"Of course I do. I brought you one as well."

"Oh, I love you."

"Good."

You take them both, because you need a distraction, and Mal drunkenly proposing to someone seems like distraction enough to last the hour they need, might even buy them extra time. You sidle up to him.

"Ready to get that blackout drunk like you promised me?"

He doesn't even answer, just takes the flask and chugs it, accepting the second when you pass it off like he's a marathon runner. That was straight vodka, or some other clear alcohol.

Doesn't seem to faze him in the slightest.

You are going to need a lot more hip flasks.

Kaylee surrenders one, half empty, and you get three from Jayne, which makes you wonder how much he brought because he definitely didn't give you all of them. A long hard stare gets one from Book, and you feel weird, trying to get your friend drunk enough to reconsider the institution of marriage.

You don't think it's working either, because he's still standing around scowling and not proposing marriage to anyone. You don't even care who it is anymore, you need a big motherfuck of a distraction.

He's also figured out your diabolical plan, and he's started refusing the alcohol, saying that he doesn't want anymore of your weak-as-water moonshine. So then you have to go ask Zoe, and it turns out that the she was carting around two flasks of water.

This is so not the time or place to find out your wife is pregnant.

"Can we tell everyone?"

You're still desperate for a distraction. That should buy you at least fifteen minutes. You're too busy trying to stall to be over the moon, but you swear you'll get back to that later.

"What? No, I only found out this morning. I haven't even confirmed it with the doctor."

"Zoe. You know I love you."

"What do you want."

"Uh…"

It all comes out in a rush, about River and the movie being not exactly finished and Tahiti being nice this time of year and trying to get Mal to get married to Inara while drunk and she's holding up her had to stop you and you wonder why your wife seems so much more competent than you at any given moment…

"How long?"

You check your phone. River has started exporting the film. It'll be ready in forty minutes, but she needs to sneak out the back and arrive at the premiere in style, even though she's been here for two days straight now.

"Thirty minutes."

She sighs.

"One distraction coming right up."

You aren't sure how or when she did it, but your wife had some kind of coded contingency distraction plot put in place at some point because, you swear, all she does is cough and say loudly "oh would you look at the time, we're going to be late starting, what a shame" and it seems like everyone's in on it.

And you do mean everyone, because Kaylee just fainted in Simon's arms and Mal is suddenly blind, stumbling drunk and yelling to inquire if anyone can lend him an engagement ring he'll give it right back he swears, Mattie is either faking respiratory distress or straight up dying because Simon drops Kaylee in order to go be a doctor and Book scrambles to catch her before she cracks her head open on the carpeted pavement.

Jayne is yelling at Simon to do something, so you figure the respiratory distress is fake because Jayne is useless ninety percent of the time but he'd never actually panic in front of Mattie. Also he told that she used to pull that trick all the time so they could leave places they didn't want to be.

You aren't sure Simon knows that, but he's a great doctor, he'll figure it out. Book is fanning Kaylee and asking someone to get water and Mal is trying to convince your wife that they belong together, that she's the only one who's been there for him, and that all three of you should be married together. It eases the wound left by him kissing Jayne, but not by much.

In the background, you learn that not only is Mr Universe's supermodel date his supermodel wife, so not only do you have no choice but to refer to her as Mrs Universe from now on out, but she's getting caught up in all the drama too and wrestling her ring off her finger. She waves in it his face and throws it, hard, in a calculated direction.

Inara pounces on Mrs. Universe and proclaims her love, so that's when you know that that's probably fake too. You can't be sure though, because Mr. Universe looks both convincingly devastated and resigned. You'd be devastated and resigned too, if Zoe ran off with Inara.

Mal scrambles to find it, figuring he'll take what he can get in order to convince your wife to enter a polyamorous marriage. You know he's not drunk, but in the moment you fall over him as he crawls around looking for the ring, you really believe it.

You think you might being going blind, because everything looks an awful lot like a big blurred blob due to the camera flashes working overtime. You've walked into at least six people so far, and two of them might have been cardboard standies, you aren't a hundred percent sure.

At this point the shock seems be wearing off, so you rip open your tux and shirt, revealing River Tam's face, stylized to suit the Ace Attorney logo under it, to the world just as she arrives, barefoot and looking like she doesn't even know what sleep is. She's wearing a worn summer dress, and judging by the garment bag slung over her shoulder, it wasn't exactly the outfit she was supposed to wear.

Dishevelled is putting it likely.

Her laugh peals like a bell when she sees your chest, and she stumbles over to take a photo with it, abandoning what is no doubt a thousand dollar dress in the middle of the red carpet before taking a selfie with your bare (and fairly pathetic) chest.

Inara picks it up and folds it over her arm for safe keeping, shaking her head after her.

In the middle of Zoe's gentle dissuasion of a pseudo-drunken Mal's proposition - and it's beautiful, it really is - River starts hauling you all to the premiere. You take that to mean that it has finished exporting.

Really. It's miraculous how everything magically resolves itself when there's a film to get to.

Kaylee is suddenly revived, and Mattie finds herself able to breathe as well as ever she can, Mr. and Mrs. Universe resolve their sudden marital issues and Mal returns the ring upon the sudden revelation that he and Zoe are better off as just friends and Inara decides that if Mrs. Universe is so willing go to back to her husband, she's not even worth her love.

She links arms with Mal, insisting loudly that "they don't deserve us."

It's enough to bring a grown man to tears, if you wasn't so busy trying to rebutton his shirt and find the speech you're supposed to make before the curtain goes up, about how it wouldn't have been possible without so many people.

It really wouldn't have, but you were gracious enough not to mention all the people who tried to make the dream impossible.

You might just wing it though, they've all waited long enough for this, and you can hear some vague grumbling about the delay. Zoe hands you a stack of photocopied cue cards from her clutch, and you wrap your arms around her, planting an obnoxious, sloppy kiss on her cheek because you love her and holy shit she's pregnant.

You're going to be a dad.

You mean, you're already a dad, but now you're going to be a dad to twice as many kids. A dad squared.

You rip the cue cards into tiny pieces and use them as confetti. It gets all caught in your wife's hair and when she shakes them loose, it's great because it's like a second shower of celebratory cue card confetti. You need some confetti in your life at the minute.

You regret it when you get up to make your speech, because you end up telling everyone that you passed out when you were getting River's face tattooed on your chest.

* * *

 **Please R &R, and check out inkitt's Con-Man contest, as long as it's not past the 9th of March, 2016. Then I think you'll have missed the boat, tbh. Oh, and if you've entered, let me know! **


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